In the Lotus Island Market every weekend, wheat grass is sold as a uniquely gifted health food when prepared as a juice, with nutritional and restorative powers. Its virtues at the time seemed to me to be something of a more modern and innovative discovery, although it was , as I learned , investigated in the 30's and 40's, and the art of juicing and marketing the drink occurred in the 50's. Remarkable claims have been made as to its benefits.
      Fancy then, that Rabelais (1494 to 1553),  physician,  author, theologian, and humanist, in his epic novel about the adventures of Gargantua and Pantagruel, he  described the benefits of " wheat in the blade " in   1534 .  Indeed, there is nothing new under the sun. I'm not sure Rabelais is everyone's cup of tea but he was France's treasure, although despite that, the church drove him from his country as a result of his failure to conform . Its not everyone who becomes a commonly used  English adjective such as  "rabelaisian".
      His observations on wheat grass were clearly outlined.
      He writes:  " From wheat in the blade you make a fine green sauce, simple to mix and easy to digest, which rejoices the brain, exhilarates the animal spirits, delights the sight, induces the appetite, pleases the taste, fortifies the heart, tickles the tongue, clarifies the complexion, strengthens the muscles, tempers the blood, eases the diaphragm, refreshes the liver, unblocks the spleen, comforts the kidneys, relaxes the vertebrae, empties the ureters, dilates the spermatic glands, tautens the testicle strings, purges the bladder, swells the genitals, straightens the foreskin, hardens the ballock, and rectifies the member:  giving you a good belly, and good belching, farting both noisy and silent, shitting, pissing, sneezing, crying, coughing, spitting, vomiting, yawning, snotting, breathing, inhaling, exhaling, snoring, sweating,  and erections of the john-thomaa;  also countless other rare advantages. "
           Unfortunately we are not told of the other countless rare advantages. Nevertheless the observations of Rabelais render the modern pitch of wheatgrass rather pallid,  woudn't you agree?

I have no background knowledge of music or music instruments since I am a surgical mug and tone deaf, but I am married to the pianist so I glean her periodic droppings. I go to the occasional musical soiree and nod at expressions of ecstasy shown by friends so as to join in, but I know where I really belong and it's the other kind of theatre, the operating theatre. I have tried!!
       The pianist's mother was a concert cellist and she played till she was eighty five, and practised in our home rather than her apartment since she was driving her fellow apartment dwellers crazy with her unending scales.!
        I was working one day in the operating room with a colleague doing a long case and he was going on at the time, endlessly it seemed, about a side occupation he did in addition to his general practice. He was a classical music lover and scholar and had an interest in brokering string instruments. He was enthusiastic about a Stradivarius he had acquired the rights to and had traveled to Olympic city, " Where the money is, " he said, " to show it to a client. "  I half listened to him as he rattled on gaily about his forays in the precious instrument trade, while I kept track of the surgical matter of his patient in my hands.
          Then he said out of the blue, "I have a bid on a Vaillaume cello as well. They are rare but there is a client of mine in the market for one if I can find it. "Oh ya ,"  I said,  half listening, "we have one of those in a closet at home."  There was silence.  He knew I was a barbarian and couldn't tell the difference between a cello and a kettledrum.  At least that's what he probably thought.
           " No," he said
          " Yes, " I said, " It's probably in a closet somewhere in the house."
        Well, there was no way that he wasn't going to see it that night.  He said nothing more and assiduously paid attention to what we were doing to his patient over the balance of the case.  Then I couldn't hold him back. He bounded up the stairs of the home at ten pm and said in profound disbelief to the pianist, " You don't have a Vaillaume cello in your closet, do you?"
        "Yes" she said,  " My mother bought it in Paris when she played there in 1928."
       My colleague examined it carefully and then looked at me as if I was a newly hatched giant of the music industry. I felt like a poseur after all that talk , but I wasn't going to let him know that I was just a surgical mug who knew what was in a closet , somewhere in the house.
        
          

For years our family has spoken Eg Latin, a superior subset of Pig Latin that has a much greater cypher advantage than other forms of Pig Latin. Eg Latin is either not generally known, or alternatively below dignity for most of the linguistically superior amongst us. We used it for fun, a harmless preoccupation, but it was completely confounding to the uninitiated.
     In standaed Pig Latin the first consonant or consonant cluster is transposed to the end of the word and a post-fixed vocalization, AY, is placed behind the transposed letter or cluster .  Hence Rhinocerous would be represented as  inocerousrhay or  hinocerousray. Not too difficult to translate even for the easily confounded. With Eg Latin, each syllable of a word is applied with the vocalization  Eg,  without transposition of letters. Hence Rhinocerous becomes Rheginegocegeregous. You will see from this that Eg has followed the consonant or consonant cluster of each syllable in its place, but  the last one , "ous"  which has no consonant so the  Eg precedes the "ous" or in any syllable that begins with a vowel.
         This is much easier to speak than it looks. Small children will take to it like a duck to water. Start with simple stuff Like Pig---Pegig , Latin=== Legategin,  Over-- Egoveger. The only reason I started with Rhinocerous  was to demonstrate  how effective this was with multisyllabics
    I was taught this Pig matter by my father and have taught it to my succeeding generations. I recall flying with our family somewhere years ago and talking quietly in Eg Latin to a kid of ours that was misbehaving. Suddenly the family seated behind us joined our conversation much to our delight.
      I am completely illiterate in any language except English, so I scrape the bottom of the barrel as my only claim to linguistic pluralism is derived from the country of Eg.

Out of interest I traveled once to an alternative therapies conference on back pain. It was an interesting experience to listen to the diverse opinions and seriousness with which some of the proponents of the various treatments described their results. At a break in the conference for lunch, I was seated next to a young woman practitioner of a discipline with which I was not familiar. We engaged in a short conversation as she seemed very pleasant and was surprised when I told her I was a medical doctor.
       She said, "Pardon me for saying this , but why is it that medical doctors' handwriting is so illegible?  "Well, I said  "It's because we are taught to write badly.  In the second year medical school class the course, How to Write Bad 201 is taught"
         " How can that be ?" she said credulously. I waited for a glint of humor in those eyes, but it didn't appear.
            "Well" I said,  piling it on, "We can't be held  responsible for what we write,  since no one else can read it but us."
            " Good heavens." she said,  "I didn't know that. I looked for any sign of amusement, but there was none in that serious mien.
             Up the ante was my way to deal with the matter. Surely in that stretch she would see that I was joking.  "Yes"  I said,  "and in the course in third year medicine,  how to Mumble 301 is taught.  Hence we complete the skill set, how to communicate without doing so.  That way we avoid any trouble such as  , 'You said this or that ! ' "
          "Well " she said as she rose from the table,  " I'm glad you told me that ! "  I could see immediately that I was in deep trouble. She didn't get it. My humor fell flat. To disavow it  now would be disingenuous and reaffirm what she probably wished to believe in the first place. I had just trashed myself and medicine in the face of an attempt at ill-advised humor in the wrong arena. Some insight would suggest that I was a smart-ass.
         I could imagine the furtive looks of disgust from the assembly of conference  attendees in the coffee hour later.  I slunk away and listened to the rest of the conference in the shadows. As so many of my loved ones have said to me before, " Why can't you ever be serious for once?"

 The crawl space of the house we built on Lotus Island is three feet high, large and labyrinthine in nature since it was adapted to a previous footprint. When traversing the labyrinth on one's belly and knees the odd pink insulation that hangs down spookily, brushes one's face in the dark while the crawling, wiggling ,undulating movements causes cement dust to call up little storm clouds. As we do, we sense the sounds of fluids running in and out of the many pipes, ingressing and egressing to and from the house, giving one's hand a little thrill as the myriad of pipes softly vibrate in response to the flow.
       Here is a world apart and alive, but connected to a house that credits little to its dependence on the vital and visceral nature emanating from this dark region. There is no area so underestimated in importance as this subterranean world.The heat, the light, the water, the ventilation, the septic system, the internet, the communication, all arise from the Action Central,  the crawl space. I like being there because one is right at the source, the vital organs, where every thing hangs in the balance and deep understanding is supplied to the kinetics of the house. It is the place the houses  all draw from and connect to the world at large. The umbilical cords are there,  connected to the placental world.
      And yet the realtors never sing the praises of the crawl space. The purchasers never celebrate the crawl space with its firm and anchoring foundation walls protecting the umbilical cords. No poet creates a panegyric to its footprint  that serves the house so well, and yet is so unsung.  Some of those of a more delicate nature may find it arduous and unpleasant to enter this dark world on their belly where the possibility of vermin, wasps, bees and ants often coexist. These dark adapted inhabitants won't likely adversely affect Action Central. They just know a good place when they find one.
        My son-in -law and I spent an hour or so in the crawl space worming our way through the apertures of the labyrinth, necessarily prostrating ourselves to its beauties. Our exploration was like an exploratory laparotomy where you examine and admire the conduits and the vital organs in action that make the organism go. The crawl space is the mother of necessity.

'I recently read a column in the National Post by Barbara Amiel in which she mentioned Septimus Harding, in passing. He is one of my favorite characters in fiction, and a subject that figures large, in Anthony Trollope's novel, Barchester Towers. He is a prime example of the ordinary as truly extraordinary.
      The fabric of the novel clearly displays the seven cardinal sins, shown in relief in the carefully crafted clergy, But throughout, the threads of this seemingly ordinary man Septimus appear from time to time , always in the background, except at the conclusion.
       In the BBC film production of Barchester Towers, artistic license  was taken,in that the paragraph about Septimus Harding that ends the novel has been moved and placed instead in the film as a eulogy provided by his son-in-law. But as I say again, in the book it is Trollope's own concluding narrative paragraph. Clearly it is of great importance to Trollope as he takes it upon himself to describe his own feelings toward his own creation, rather than the film narrative device  of having another character speak of him.
        Herein goes the paragraph:  " The author now leaves him  (Harding) in the hands of his readers;  not as a hero, not as a man to be admired and talked of, not as a man who should be toasted at public dinners and spoken of with conventional absurdity as a perfect divine, but as a good man without guile, believing humbly in the religion which he has striven to teach, and guided by the precepts which he has striven to learn."
         One can clearly see why the BBC had to place this wonderful paragraph as dialogue to include it. One can also clearly see why Trollope is willing to place Septimus Harding at the mercy of his readers. One can clearly see the place in this life of the Septimus Hardings of this world is so obscured by the lurid and extravagant that we can not see them through the haze. When a master like Trollope brings them into life we are humbled by their majesty.

Next week is Remembrance Day. My anticipated experience with war was never to take place. In 1994 the continuation of civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovena between the multi-ethnic factions of the former Yugoslavians was at a height and thousands were dying. My friends John, an anaesthetist, and David, a plastic surgeon went off to Sarajevo with Medicines sans Frontieres to do voluntary work for a time in the fray. The MSF held no candle for Christian or Muslim, or Croatian or Serbian. Surgical care was care and even handed.
       John visited me for lunch when he returned and we talked. I thought about it briefly and phoned the nurse-coordinator in Toronto for MSF and talked to her, She said an Orthopedic surgeon was needed and would be valuable and agreed to sign me on as a volunteer if I thought about it. The pianist and I went out for supper and I told her what I had considered,  but I couldn"t really tell her why. I guessed it came down to John was so enthused with his own experience that I wanted a taste of the same.
        A family member of mine who was a policeman and had been a military policeman overseas told me I was too old to go and that my plan was silly. He said, "You are sixty years old and it's a war zone. You have rheumatoid arthritis and you can't run on a road with potholes of craters from explosives and carry a heavy pack and if there is conflict when you are in the operating room, no one is going to help you get out. You'll be on your own."  It may be that what might have superficially appeared as altruistic on my part was a fraud but my age and lack of fleetness off foot was not fraudulent and he was right. The pianist had the good sense to let the matter drop as a momentary loss of reality and a return to reason.
        However,  I can remember tomorrow  and lament the loss of the young, tomorrow and every day, and be grateful for those who do work to care for the injured in hospitals where there is war. But it wouldn't be helpful to get in the way of the young and competent. I guess it's still true, that your young men will have visions;  your old men will dream dreams.

Through the window of the east wall of the Chemaimus Theatre, dining room,  one can see the Tree of Heaven on November 11th, it's brown and red helicopter seeds gone, leaves gone but still flourishing in the dry and unforgiving pavement of the ground. All Saints and All Souls day are approaching and Remembrance day is near. All are a reminder of those who have gone before for we who have admired the Tree of Heaven.
       As a young surgeon I worked in the 1960's and 70's in the Veterans Hospital in Lotus City before it was subsumed by the Royal Jubilee Hospital as the Memorial Pavilion. From the large operating room windows one could see the large Trees of Heaven on Adanac Street adjacent to the Veteran's Hospital. They seemed appropriately placed with their helicopter seeds spreading thoughout the neighborhood.
         My thoughts have gravitated recently to the Veterans hospital, now gone , and the Tree of Heaven and Remembrance Day and All Souls Day. For those veterans now gone----" These are they who came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb-------- and God will wipe away all tears from their eyes."  (Revelations)

In Saskatchewan in 1950 when I was in grade 12, a mandatory course in the provincial curriculum was called Agricultural Economics. It represented more than just another course. It was a signal that reflected the cultural imperative for the bald prairie following the hardships of the dirty thirties when the topsoil drifted off the land due to drought, wind and poor cultural practices in agriculture. The PFRA,:  The Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration was enacted to ensure that improvements in dry land farming would never again allow those dreadful times to recur. The shelter belts, contour plowing, deep furrow planting, stubble retention, summer fallow, early maturing wheat, and prairie grass seeding were implemented in my time in the 40's and 50's and were a deep and abiding part of our culture as evidenced by that added teaching to school curriculum and the cultural imperative it addressed.
        In Kindersley in the 40's I still vividly remember the wet rags around the windows amidst frequent dust storms. The relentless wind blowing the Russian thistle across the bald prairie, unhampered by fences, seeding as they tumbled into the piled up topsoil that lay against the fences and into ditches.. Later, in Conquest, the PFRA  planted shelter belts, 12 foot Carragana hedges (Siberian peashrub) in fields in rows every eighth of a mile apart to check the wind erosion and preserve the blowing snow drifts for precious water retention in the spring and protecting the roads from snow load when we went to school by cutter.
         Many years later I couldn't imagine a mandatory course in high school that would so reflect the overarching cultural mores and direct the interest to everyone of school age to the interest in and economic importance of preservation of the habitat. I have changed my mind. The zeal we felt then has reappeared in new clothing. Dressed in today's energy toward a green revolution,  and the ecological drive manifest by today's youth who are addressing a new problem with the same zeal and commitment to preserve that we had. In effect it is still the environment and still an appreciation , now as then, of the looming danger of loss.
         I don't have my essay from grade 12 now, since I haven't saved my paper from 69 years ago, but I remember Bill Cybulski gave me an A+ for my report on the work of the PFRA. The changes were a matter of survival of the prairie society at that time. We knew nothing about the presence of oil or potash, uranium or the tremendous diversity of grains now grown. For me it is wonderful to watch today's economic renaissance in Saskatchewan, combined with the need for economic balance described  in the care of the land we were given long ago.

Some time ago --- (BC) (Before Covid}  the pianist and I went to a performance of Chor Leoni .  They were a noted  Canadian  men's choir from Olympic City  and usually sang classical music,  whatever that is. The pianist says  "Within the common practice period." This time, however, they sang Gospel music and soul music from the pen of Stephen Foster. I went away thinking that there was little difference between the religious and secular when the soul of the music is exposed.
         It got me thinking more widely about Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Stephen Foster and the compelling nature of Gospel music, and that genre of thinking, and the Ovum,  that is buried in every human,   that seeks to be penetrated by the chord of truth and beauty. Though my association was admittedly a broad band,  both authors bravely swam in the time of  the sea of iniquity in their country.
          Stephen Foster in his short and desperate life provided soul music that lifted his nation and struck a chord deep in everyone who wept. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote a story that shocked and served to revolutionize an attitude that slowly cracked barriers forever. Technically they may not have produced so- called great literature or music, but they touched the spirit. Both were criticized mightily during their lifetimes and Uncle Tom's Cabin was shunned by many up to modern times. How would these two  have known the influence they provided has lasted up to now.?
         When you walk away from a performance with a warm glow in your heart and resolve for the umpteenth time to crank up your "anima" again, you can celebrate both classical and classy!  Religious is as Religious does.